1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display, and an apparatus and method of driving the plasma display. More particularly, the present invention relates to a sustain discharge circuit for a plasma display.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display is a display using a Plasma Display Panel (PDP) that uses a plasma generated by a gas discharge to display characters or images. In the PDP, a plurality of discharge cells are arranged in a matrix.
In general, the plasma display is driven by dividing one field into a plurality of subfields, and grayscales are displayed by a combination of weight values of subfields among the plurality of subfields, in which a display operation is performed. During an address period of each subfield, cells are selected to be turned on and not to be turned on. During a sustain period, a sustain discharge is performed on the cells to be turned on so as to display images.
In order to perform these operations, a high level voltage and a low level voltage are alternately supplied to electrodes performing the sustain discharge during the sustain period. Since two electrodes where the sustain discharge is generated serve as capacitive components, a reactive power is required to supply a high level voltage and a low level voltage to the electrodes. Accordingly, as a sustain discharge circuit of a plasma display, an energy recovery circuit that recovers and reuses reactive power is generally used. As an example of an energy recovery circuit according to the related art, there is an energy recovery circuit (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,866,349 and 5,081,400) suggested by L. F. Weber. However, according to the energy recovery circuit according to the related art, an energy recovery ratio is lowered due to a voltage drop of a switch, a voltage drop of a diode, a leakage component of an inductor, and a parasitic leakage resistance in a circuit.